Unfortunate Circumstance
by amyanomaly
Summary: She floated into Charming on a bus from somewhere far away and left impressions in her path. Juice/OC
1. Chapter 1

_I own nothing but the characters you don't recognize._

* * *

She floated into Charming on a bus from somewhere far away, walking through town wearing a denim vest over a flowing black dress with lace sleeves. Her hair was long and bright red-orange, hanging loosely over her shoulders. No one knew where she came from, but she rented an apartment near where Juice Ortiz lived, the first Sons of Anarchy member to notice her.

She walked everywhere she went, not owning a car in Charming, but each day she passed in front of the Teller-Morrow Garage, glancing into the parking lot. Some days she saw bikers riding out of the lot, wearing leather vests proclaiming them as part of the SONS OF ANARCHY, CALIFORNIA motorcycle club, with a Grim Reaper staring back at her.

Juice hadn't met her, but he had seen her carrying a paper bag of groceries into her apartment. She seemed not to notice the world around her, and she stood out in Charming. No one had seen her speak to anyone and no one knew how she could keep buying groceries each week, because she didn't have a job in the small town.

The first time she spoke to someone in Charming, it was to Clay Morrow. He was the President of the Sons of Anarchy and most women who weren't involved in the club, kept their distance from him. Even women inside the club knew to keep their distance. Clay radiated power and strength, that he would go to any length to keep himself at the head of the table.

She had said hello to him in passing, as if she did so with everyone. Clay hadn't been concerned, she was just some girl running from her past into Charming's welcoming arms, there was no reason to even think twice about her.

He had, however, mentioned it to his wife, Gemma Teller-Morrow. He had told her casually, trying to gauge her reaction to see if his wife knew any girl with red hair that would come to Charming looking for her or anyone else in the town. Gemma hadn't known anything about some redheaded bitch, but she knew she would be keeping an eye out for her now.

* * *

Chief Wayne Unser had seen the girl in town, walking down the main street, looking into the store shops. She had stopped in front of the cigar shop, tilted her head in confusion then continued on walking. Unser watched from his police car, contemplating introducing himself to her.

It wasn't often that new people moved to Charming just for the location or neighborhood. Unser pulled himself out of his car, and jaywalked across the street to stand in front of the girl.

"Hi," he started. "Welcome to Charming. I'm Chief Wayne Unser."

"Hello," she said back, nodding. She stepped around him, to continue down the street.

"What brought you to Charming?" Unser asked, wanting to find out the dirt on this girl before someone else did.

"It's just another place," she told him, raising an eyebrow at his curiosity. "And I was looking for another place."

"If you need any help—"

"I won't be," she replied.

Unser hesitated, then smiled at her. "Alright, hope you enjoy Charming."

She nodded at Chief Unser and continued down the street, quickly putting distance between them. Unser was left standing there, staring at the spot where the girl had just been, wondering why he hadn't asked for her name.

* * *

Two weeks later, Gemma Teller-Morrow spotted the girl. She was tiny and attractive, like Gemma had figured. The girl was sitting on the swing set at the edge of the Teller Morrow Garage property, swaying slightly. Gemma wondered how the girl got on the property, past all the Sons and the fence with barbed wire at the top, as she grabbed the gun out of her purse. She looked down, checking to make sure it was loaded. When she glanced back out the window of the office, the girl was gone.

All that was left of proof that she had even been there, was the swing that was still swaying back and forth.


	2. Chapter 2

_I couldn't stay away from the site, so I figured I could upload another chapter._

* * *

Juice hadn't seen much of the girl even though he lived so close to her. But one day he saw her trying to lug an ugly green upholstered armchair up the stairs by herself. He sighed, set his bag and things inside the door of his apartment and jogged over to her. She pushed her hair over her shoulder, trying to lift the chair up another stair.

"Here, let me help," Juice offered, grabbing the legs of the chair. She looked up, smiled and hefted the back of the chair up in her arms.

"It's heavier than it looked," she offered as he settled the armchair outside her apartment door.

"No one stayed to help you?" Juice asked, having seen someone in a pickup truck lift it out of the back, leaving it on the ground in front of the stairs.

"He had someplace to be, I guess," she said simply, and turned to Juice when she unlocked her apartment.

Easily enough, Juice grabbed the chair and quickly brought it through the door, dropping it on the ground a few feet away. Before he turned to leave, he glanced around her apartment. It was the same setup as his, but the walls in hers were painted a charcoal gray, and her mattress lay on the floor a few feet away from the kitchenette. The kitchenette was sectioned off with wooden beads hanging from the ceiling and Juice knew the door was to the small bathroom.

On one wall there was a large world map tacked up and the rest of the wall was surrounded in photos of places, things and occasionally people.

"It looks really cool," Juice told her as he turned around. She dropped her bag with the fringed bottom on the bed and pushed the chair until it was in the corner, next to a lamp and a secondhand bookshelf, housing a laptop on one of the shelves.

With her back turned, Juice saw the beginning of a handgun peeking out of her bag.

"Thank you," she told him as she turned around. "For the comment and the muscle."

Juice laughed and said, "Welcome."

He stood in the doorway and said, "See you around—oh, my name's Juice by the way."

"Cole," she replied and shook his outstretched hand.

Juice nodded again and ducked out of Cole's apartment, pulling the door closed behind himself.

He stood there for a moment, wondering who she was, where she had come from and why she was carrying a gun in her bag.

The next day, he saw her stepping out of her apartment at the same time as Juice. She turned her head to look down towards Juice's door and nodded at him. Juice nodded back, smiling at her.

That night he never saw her come home, nor the next two days. He was left to think she ditched her place and ran, though he didn't know why. He thought about telling the Sons about her, but didn't after he realized they would just brush it off.


	3. Chapter 3

Juice didn't see her again until she was being forced out of a slow moving van in front of the Teller Morrow Garage.

She landed hard on her left arm, and her white dress was dirty and ripped, the seam hanging down a few inches from the rest of the material. Her vest was relatively untouched, but when Juice kneeled down next to her, to try and see if her head was bleeding, he saw two dots of blood on the collar. She groaned in pain as she sat up, with help from Juice and held her arm to her chest.

"Tara!" Juice yelled for Jax Teller's girlfriend, Doctor Tara Knowles. She came running towards them, with Jax and a few other men clad in Sons of Anarchy cuts behind her.

Carefully, Tara inspected her hand, knowing it was most likely broken from the girl's fall. Tara pushed up from the ground, ordering someone to pick the girl up and bring her into the Sons of Anarchy clubhouse. She followed behind Juice carrying the girl, grabbing her medical bag from her car on the way.

Juice laid Cole on the couch, not wanting to put her on any hard surface, knowing she could have more injuries then just her arm. Cole stared at Tara's face, hazel eyes unfocused as Tara poked and prodded. She pushed back Cole's bangs, finding a gash on her forehead. She disinfected and cleaned it, knowing it wasn't deep enough to need stitches.

"What the hell happened to you?" Tara asked, knowing the girl wouldn't answer her. After a few more minutes, after most of the men had dispersed, Tara asked her another question. "Are you hurt anywhere else?"

"Not serious," Cole said quietly, and Tara stared at her wrist she had just put in a makeshift splint.

"You need a cast for your arm. I'm taking you to the hospital."

Cole's eyes flashed up to meet Tara's. "No, no hospitals, no cops."

Tara looked up at Jax, then to Juice. She turned her eyes back on Cole. "I can get the supplies to make the cast, but it'll be until at least tomorrow before I can get back here."

"I'm fine," she said. "You've done enough already, thank you."

She made to stand up, but Tara pushed a hand against her shoulders. "You're not leaving until I can cast your arm. Do you understand me?"

Cole glanced around the room for the first time, taking in the wall of mug shots and then back to the two remaining men in the room. Both were wearing cuts, and the blonde, the man she hadn't met before, his had a patch that said Vice President. That hat to mean something important.

"Okay," she said.

"My name is Tara."

"I'm Cole," she replied.

"That's Jax and this is Juice," Tara continued.

Cole nodded. "I met Juice already."

Jax looked at Juice with confusion. He hadn't mentioned meeting the new girl in town to anyone before and it had been a topic Gemma had brought up, wondering who the hell she was.

* * *

The next day, in the late afternoon, Tara returned after her shift at the St. Thomas hospital with all that she needed to create Cole's cast. Cole had been put up in a dorm room, and she had slept with a pillow holding her wrist up and men making sure she didn't leave, both at Tara's request. She barely slept, still feeling the pain from Tara pressing against her arm to see if the bone was actually fractured and not just sprained.

With a man with a scarred face helping her, Tara casted Cole's arm in blue plaster, after giving her pain pills with a fake name on the prescription label. Cole thanked Tara, expecting to be able to leave.

After the scarred man left, Jax replaced him and he sat in a chair in the corner. No one knew this girl—not even Juice even though he had met her before—and Jax wasn't taking any chances with leaving Tara alone with her.

"What happened to you?" Tara asked.

Cole pressed her lips together in a line. She glanced down at her cast, then up at Tara. "I'm grateful, really I am. But I don't think it's any of your business what happened to me. I'm an adult; I can take care of myself."

"Obviously not! You were just pushed out of a moving vehicle less than twenty-four hours ago!" Tara exclaimed, turning to Jax for support.

"You got dropped off on SAMCRO property, it's our business," Jax said.

"SAMCRO?" Cole questioned, as she noticed the patch on the side of Jax's cut.

"Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club Redwood Original," Jax clarified. "Now tell me, who did this to you?"

"I never saw their faces," she told him. "They weren't wearing any cuts like you."

"What did they say to you?"

"They said they would come back and kill me, if I told anyone about what happened to my mother and sister," Cole said. "And trust me, I'm not about to tell you what happened. I don't want to end up like them."

Jax stood and motioned for Tara to leave the room. He wanted to speak to this girl one-on-one to get the truth from her. If the Sons were going to be involved, he wanted to know what they were up against. Jax walked across the room, and sat on the bed next to Cole.

"I need to know what we're up against here, if we're going to deal with this. Do you understand me?"

"You don't need to help me. I'll just move to another place," she told him. "I've been on my own since I was fifteen, okay? I know how to disappear. They've found me once before, but that was a long time ago. It's taken them six years to find me since then. If I just move, I'll have another six years most likely."

"Do you really believe that?" He asked, watching her intently. When she didn't answer, Jax said, "The Sons keep a lot of secrets, what's one more?"

Cole sighed, and ran a hand through her hair. "Why should I trust you?"

"You don't know me, you have no reason to. But I want to help you."

She contemplated it a few more minutes and said, "My father was a junkie. Terrible one, too. Half the time he didn't even remember he had a wife and kids. He was always in debt with his dealers. He couldn't keep a steady job because of his addiction, so he could barely ever pay them. When I was fifteen, it got really bad. He gave me and my sister and my mom up to his dealers. I think they were running human trafficking or something, and my dad thought three women would suffice to cover his debt. It was."

Cole paused, looking away from Jax and swallowed.

"I was out of town when the men came to get us. They took my mother and sister, while I was away on a field trip with school to our state's capital. I had my mom's cell phone, because I would be away for so long, so she could get in touch with me. That night, my dad sobered up a little. He realized what he'd done and called me, to tell me what happened and not to come home. I haven't seen any of them since then, but I know my father's dead. My mother and my sister haven't been seen since then, either. The local newspaper ran a story about my mother taking me and my sister away from my dad, so no one even looked for them."

"How'd your father die?"

"They most likely killed him after finding out he told me to stay away," Cole told him. She looked over at him. "I don't know why they're still after me, but I've been running ever since."

Jax thought for a moment. "They couldn't have just been drug dealers."

"I saw their faces every week—sometimes more—since I was three years old. They _know_ I'm still alive. I could go to the police at any moment," Cole said.

"But it's been how many years? Wouldn't you have gone to the police by now if you were planning to?" Jax asked, trying to make sense of Cole's story.

She shrugged. "You don't have to protect me. I've been fine on my own before."

"SAMCRO doesn't let innocent people be threatened in Charming. We're going to find these guys and we're going to take care of them," Jax told her, sure of himself. He knew that if these men had managed to pick Cole up in Charming, they had been watching her for a while, watching her walk past the Sons of Anarchy property each day.

"Thank you," she said quietly. "I've been afraid for almost nine years now."

Jax nodded, patted her shoulder and stood up. "Come out and eat something. Tara and my mom are still here, as well as some of the guys."

"Okay," she replied and took a deep breath after Jax left the room.

* * *

_Any suggestions? Moving too fast? I don't normally share my fanfiction so..._


	4. Chapter 4

In Charming, it wasn't common for a girl to get taken from a public place and chained up for three days before getting pushed out of a van onto SAMCRO property. It would have made more sense for one of the Sons to go missing then this girl, at least, to everyone that didn't know about her past like Jax did.

They wanted to find whoever kidnapped her; these men didn't seem like they were just going to disappear after dropping Cole off. Jax knew he shouldn't tell Cole anything about the real activities inside the club, but he knew he wanted her protected. If it had been Tara, or Gemma, or any other person he was close to, he would keep them at the clubhouse for protection.

But Cole was new in town, didn't know any of them from Adam, and Jax didn't want to force the girl to stay in the clubhouse. It wasn't a place for anyone besides Sons and Old Ladies and the woman that kept the single—and sometimes not so single—Sons company.

After being kidnapped, Jax doubted Cole wanted to be around strangers. Especially ones like the Sons. He loved his brothers, but sometimes they were a bit _too much _for normal people to deal with.

Jax sent her home in the tow truck with one of the Prospects driving, with a few of the Sons following behind to make sure she was okay. He wanted to have one of the Prospects stay with her, but Juice had told Jax he lived only four doors down, that he would look out for Cole.

The next day when Juice came in to work at the garage, Cole was on the back of his bike, still wearing the same vest over a t-shirt and shorts, her blue cast sticking out like a sore thumb. Even though she was in the safest place possible, Cole felt nervous being outside the four walls of her apartment after what had happened.

"What's she doing here?" Gemma asked her son, as she spotted the redhead on the kids' swing set again.

"SAMCRO's looking for the guys that kidnapped her," Jax told her. "Think someone might be watching her apartment."

"This girl is going to be nothing but trouble, Jax," she said, shaking her head as she watched one of the Prospects offer the girl a soda.

"She got kidnapped in _Charming_," Jax stressed. "What do you want me to do, let her get killed by whoever these assholes are?"

"If she's on the run from her past, she can continue running."

"I'm _not _discussing this," Jax told her. "I talked to Clay. He's putting it to a vote tonight, whether we protect her or not."

Jax gave his mother a pointed look and added, "Don't go starting shit with Cole, okay?"

"So you're on a first name basis with her?" Gemma asked, raising an eyebrow and putting her hands on her hips.

"I'm going back to work," Jax finally said, and left the office, shaking his head. He loved his mother, but sometimes he didn't understand her need for drama.

* * *

Later on, when Juice was eating lunch, Cole decided to sit next to him at the picnic table.

"Hi," Cole said quietly as Juice looked up at her, mouthful of noodles. She laughed slightly and asked, "So what's up with the guys wearing Prospect patches?"

Juice swallowed his mouthful and said, "They wanna be a part of the Sons of Anarchy. It's like a trial run, you know, like being a student teacher before an actual teacher."

"And the hazing is just something they have to deal with?" She asked, watching one of the Prospects being teased by the man with curly dark hair and bright blue eyes.

"Yeah, for at least a year," Juice said, shrugging.

"It's kinda mean," Cole offered, propping her elbows up on the table, crossing her arms, letting her cast drop against the wood.

"They knew what they were getting into."

Cole let him eat his cup of noodles in peace for a few minutes before she asked, "Are there any Prospects that don't make it the full year?"

"There have been guys that don't even make it a day," Juice told her, rolling his eyes at one of the guys that had started Prospecting with him, but hadn't made it past the day like Juice had.

Cole nodded in understanding.

"You can use my computer if you want," Juice offered after a few more silent minutes. "Normally it's not this boring around here."

"Are most days more like yesterday? With girls falling out of vans and breaking their wrists?"

"Not exactly," Juice told her. He shrugged. "But that's close enough."

After Juice threw away his Styrofoam cup, he led Cole into the clubhouse for the second time. She took in more of the room this time, the wall of mug shots, the plaid couches and the Grim Reaper watching over the entire room. In the corner—behind the stripper pole—was a desk, with a large white computer monitor and a laptop sitting haphazardly on the edge.

Juice grumbled something about no one respecting his things, and pushed the laptop back onto the desk.

"I'm assuming you know how to hack into databases?"

"What type of database?" Juice's eyebrows rose. He shouldn't be telling her anything about what he did for the Sons.

"Autopsy reports? From the state of Ohio?" Cole asked hopefully. This was more than she wanted to be telling him, but she was too curious now that she might have the opportunity to know for sure how her father died.

"Might be available to the public." Juice sat down in the old looking office chair and opened the laptop. Cole turned as he started to enter his password, and walked over to the bar. As she approached, a Prospect appeared in the doorway to the kitchen area.

He looked at Cole in question. He'd never seen her here before; she wasn't any of the members' Old Ladies.

"Do you want a drink or something?" He asked, pushing his glasses up his nose.

"No thanks," she said. She watched as the Prospect started wiping down the counter.

"I'm Phil," he offered, when he looked up. Normally all the women involved with the club left him alone for the most part.

"Cole," she said, and smiled.

"Whose autopsy do you want to look up?" Juice asked.

Phil looked at her with confusion. Cole shrugged, looking sheepish, before joining Juice again.

"Marcus Mitchell," she told him, looking over his shoulder.

"Heroine-morphine intoxication," Juice read quietly. "It was an overdose."

Cole swallowed. "They didn't—he killed himself."

"You okay?" Juice questioned, as he exited the file. It was easy enough to find; Ohio's autopsy reports were open to the public.

"Yeah. I, um, I just wasn't expecting that," she answered, schooling her expression into that of indifference.

"_Juice!" _An accented voice yelled out, and Juice was immediately jumping up out of his chair. "Business to attend to, Juicy. Jax needs our help."

The man wore a long sleeved black shirt underneath his leather cut, with a pair of sunglasses pushing his hair back. He gave Cole a smile, unconcerned with who she was at the moment, and dragged Juice towards the door of the clubhouse.

"Um," Juice started.

"Prospect'll keep ya company, love," the other man said and the two of them left.


End file.
